Conventional mills used for size reduction in a continuous mode usually incorporate a means for retaining milling media in the milling zone of the mill (e.g., milling chamber) while allowing passage of the dispersion or slurry through the mill in recirculation to a stirred holding vessel. Various techniques have been established for retaining media in these mills, including rotating gap separators, screens, sieves, centrifugally-assisted screens, and similar devices to physically restrict passage of media from the mill. Over the last ten years there has been a transition to the use of small milling media in conventional media mill processes for the preparation of various paints, pigment dispersions and photographic dispersions. This transition has been made possible due primarily to the improvements in mill designs (eg. Netzsch LMC mills and Drais DCP mills) which allow the use of media as small as 250 .mu.m. The advantages of small media include more efficient comminution (ie. faster rates of size reduction) and smaller ultimate particle sizes. Even with the best machine designs available, it is generally not possible to use media smaller than 250 .mu.m due to separator screen plugging and unacceptable pressure build-up due to hydraulic packing of the media. In fact, for most commercial applications, 350 .mu.m media is considered the practical lower limit for most systems due to media separator screen limitations.